February 11, 2025 • 25 mins
(February 11,2025)
‘Built to Burn’: L.A. hillside homes multiply without learning from past fires. Elon Musk leads an offer to buy ChatGPT’s parent company for nearly $100BIL. Family of 100-year old left in Altadena senior home calls for reforms.
‘Built to Burn’: L.A. hillside homes multiply without learning from past fires. Elon Musk leads an offer to buy ChatGPT’s parent company for nearly $100BIL. Family of 100-year old left in Altadena senior home calls for reforms.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listenings KFI AM six forty the Bill Handle show
on demand on the iHeartRadio f KFI.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It is handled here in the morning crew. It is Tuesday,
February eleventh.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
As we continue on with the program, now a little
bit about the fires, and we talk about the history
of these fires. Do you know that fires in southern
California go back, I don't know, thousands of years. How
is that possible. It really started with a conquistadoris and
(00:39):
I'll tell you about that in a moment, but let's talk.
Let's go back to nineteen sixty one. I'm gonna give
you a little history of fires in southern California. So
nineteen sixty one, you had a trash pile up in
the Mulholland Drive area and a fire broke out, picked
up by the Santa Ana Wins and then went as
(01:00):
the canyons and.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It was apocalyptic.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
And what made that one pretty interesting is how many
celebrities lived in that area. And this is why I
caught the world Tension actor Kim Novak. And by the way,
these names may not be very important or you don't
know them, but this in nineteen sixty one, these were
a List actors, actor Kim Novak, her home was destroyed.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Well, she was actually took a hose out to home
to save it.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
A guy by the name of Richard Nixon who had
lost the presidential as you know, in nineteen sixty and
then ran for governor and was killed by Pat Brown,
the governor, the father of Jerry Brown.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So he went to practice law in California.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Well, his home that was about to go, and there
he is with a garden hose trying to soak the
wooden roof shingles.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Fred McMurray who starred.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
In My Three Sons at the time and big television
series in the sixties or early sixties, he had to
evacuate his family and he took worker studio workers from
the set to help evacuate his family.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So the fire reaches bell Air.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
The mansions of bell Air where a lot of very
high end people live. Thermal heat which we've seen before
with the embers that just happened, lifted the wood shingles.
They were all of wood at that time, high end
of the air. Fifty mile an hour winds hurled them
more than a mile over Brentwood by nightfall. The bell
(02:46):
Air fire destroyed four hundred and eighty four homes, including
homes of Burt Lancaster, huge actor, comedian Joey Brown, which
I'm sure you've never heard of, but massive star Nobel
Laureate who Willard Libby, which is a fairly big news.
(03:06):
So firefighters extinguished the flames. And there was Jajah Gabor
dressed up in well in Jaja Gaborland and she is
with a shovel going through the lumber of her or
the rubble of her home, looking for a safe that
was there with her jewels in it.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And she had a zillion dollars.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Worth of jewels. That's that's who she was. So the
bell airfire became known as the big one. Back then,
four hundred and eighty four homes, that was the big one.
It forced everyone in La to reckon with the dangers
(03:50):
of fire.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
They really dealt with it now.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
They realize that people in La realized, okay, fires in
the canyons are no small deal. So l officials in
response put in a bunch of new fire safety measures,
more firefighting helicopters, new fire stations, a new reservoir, and
no more.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Untreated wood shingles.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
They had to be treated later on, it was no
more wood shingles of any kind. And you will see
today you will not see wood shingles on a house.
A roof lasts about thirty years, and we're already about
fifty years into an ordinance of no more wood shingles.
(04:33):
So now we have concrete and tile and that's fire proof,
actually not only just fire resistant, so also in high
risk fire areas, a brush clearance program. And so this
is what they're doing now. But I'll tell you what
they didn't do is they didn't stop building in the canyons.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
That they didn't do.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
So there was no measure push to radically rethink of building.
It just disappeared new housing tracks all over the place.
And then larger and more deadly fires swept through the region.
And all the fire the safety improvements improvements prompted by
the bel Air fire, well they were there, but they
(05:21):
couldn't outpace the new development and climate change.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
It's that simple.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So now we have the Eton and the Palasages fire,
probably the big one, sixteen thousand structures, twenty nine people dead,
and once again new reckoning. How many LA homes came
to be built on land that is so vulnerable to fire,
and the question.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Is should they even be rebuilt? And at this point
we're grappling with that.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Stephen Pine, it was a fire historian Professor Meredith Arizona
State University studies this.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
He said, straight out. California is built to burn straight out.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
So the way the topography is the way the climate
works in California, it is built. So what happened and
this really got crazy more than a century ago.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So what happened one hundred years ago?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Well, the building on hillsides really started with a venge vengeance.
So Los Angeles begins to overtake San Francisco as the
most populated city on the West coast, and real estate
developers begin their eye begin to look up to the
foothills of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains. There's
(06:54):
a nineteen twenty three ad that showed renderings of the
Spanish Revival houses that we have in southern California, and
there they were over steep hillsides, over bluffs. The ad read,
the future of Los Angeles is in the hills right
(07:16):
there billboards. Matter of fact, that's when Hollywood Land, the
Hollywood Sign was first built, and it was Hollywood Land
and it was advertising a tract, a real estate track
in the hills. And then the land part dropped out,
And of course now we have the world famous Hollywood
(07:37):
sign that was nineteen twenty three. You know what the
lots cost in those days two thousand bucks. You know
what that is today, thirty six thousand dollars. Now can
you imagine a lot for thirty six thousand dollars in
the hills. So in the twenties, now it was boom
(08:00):
time for La the whole country. It started to go
crazy before that the nineteen thirteen construction of the La Aqueduct.
This is William Mulholland who engineered that Mullholland Drive at
the top of the hill, and that paved the way
for one hundred thousand people to move into the city
each year because there wasn't.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Water before that.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
And when that aqueduct came down the mountain, all of
a sudden, the San Fernando Valley became a fertile landscape.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
For growing particularly oranges. Before that it was desert.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And as a matter of fact, if you go up
to the north valley right off Fornaldi, you can see
where the aqueduct spills into the area that fills up
the San Fernando Valley and the reservoirs. Bell Air marketed
itself as the exclusive residential park.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Of the West.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
There were lavish real estate ads, sales brochures, and bell
Air was so exclusive. Not only did the area, the
owner of the bel Air Tract and others not sell
to blacks or Hispanics, not that they had money anyway,
because we're talking in the twenties, but also no Jews.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Of course that's a given.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Nobody in the motion picture industry was allowed to buy
because that was considered less.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Than today bell Air. Well, you tell me, huh.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
The bell Air count Country Club started because of the discrimination.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Okay, So here we go.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Californians are drawn to the woodlands, the base of the mountains.
They didn't want to live down in the canyons. They
wanted views. So there they are at the top of
the mount on all these hillsides. Perfect place for a fire,
absolutely perfect.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
This all started.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
When the Spanish colonizer that can kiss the daughters came
in the fifteen hundreds. The natives, the Indians as they
were known the Native Americans, would use burn. They did
controlled burns. That's been going on for hundreds and hundreds
of years. So the Spanish go kiss, the daughters come.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
By, and they stop it cold. That continues.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
On eighteen fifty, legislators passed the Act for the Government
and Protection of Indians. No intentional burning anymore. So the
move to suppress fire, that's what that was about. Magnified
the risk of fire, the destructive fires. And in nineteen
(10:54):
twenty three, the Fire Chief one an ordnance prohibiting wood shingles.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
It went down that far, that early. But what happened.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Wood shingles weren't made illegal until the nineteen seventies. Well,
the lumber industry, how powerful do you think the lumber
industry was shut that down. We're not going to lose
manufacturing wood shingles, especially with a growing population like that.
(11:27):
How about that lobbyists changing a law. Well, you had
a whole bunch more fires, and then the population exploded.
After World War Two, you had all of these young
men move into Los Angeles, which was a staging ground
for the Pacific Fight, and they realized, wow, look at
(11:48):
this land, Look at these places.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
It's cheap, it's a great place to live.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
I remember my parents' home that they bought in the
mid fifties twenty six thousand dollars. Today that would be
I don't know, two fifty three hundred thousand dollars North Hollywood,
beautiful three bedroom, two bath house, gorgeous, decent sized lot.
So this went on and on with half a dozen fires.
(12:20):
Now maybe they're getting serious about retrofitting your home.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I don't know. We'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I think people are looking pretty serious now about it.
And the easy stuff is easy, putting in those vents
that stopped from embers from coming in, pulling back brush
fire resistant, fire resistant trees. At the Persian Palace, I
had big palm trees right next to the house. Those
(12:56):
ignite which is very which are very easy to ignite
and burn, would burn down the house. And the fire
was very close. And people were saying, but weren't you
worried about the fires? I go, no, I've already sold
the house, so I don't care. Okay, here's the big story.
And Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Is he crazy? Who the hell knows?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
So open Ai Elon Musk is trying to buy now.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
He started open Ai.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
It's obviously an artificial intelligence company with Sam Altman, and
he is out of it, but he's filed a lawsuit
against the company and Altman. And here's why, because Altman
misrepresented open Ai. And here's the fascinating part of it.
Altman and the other co founders were so frightened of
(13:52):
what AI could do that they established the company as
a non profit and gave its code out. It was
open source code. You can do people can do whatever
we want you want with it, which is basically the
company becomes worthless at that point, and there were investors
(14:15):
that were allowed into the company. How it got started.
You know what investors want. They do not want a nonprofit.
They want a for profit. You don't pour hundreds of
millions of dollars into a company and say, okay, it's worthless.
That it's not making any money because it is a nonprofit.
So they had to switch at least a part of
it to a for profit. Musk is suing saying, you lied,
(14:41):
you lied, You said that it was a nonprofit. Now
you have most of it as a profit, and now
it's valued at one hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
That's how big a deal AI is. And so what's
going on with this is Musk wants to buy it.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
He has his own company, x XAI and artificial intelligence
intelligence company. Major companies are investing billions and billions of
dollars into AI. So he says, I'll buy it for
one hundred billion dollars the for profit part because.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Now we've got some money.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Allman posts on x no, thank you, but we'll buy
Twitter for nine point seven four.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Billion dollars ten billion dollars. Musk bought Twitter for forty
four billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
It was worth twenty five billion dollars at the time.
Think you overpaid, and now it's valued at about ten
billion dollars. Now that's not to say Musk is the
richest man in the world, the richest person in the world.
So between SpaceX and Tenes and a few other things,
he has Tesla batteries and a bunch of other companies,
(16:05):
he's doing just fine. But the Twitter issue is it's
more of a yuts is what it is from Altman.
Altman and Musk are now enemies, I mean real enemies,
and they're suing each other, going going crazy.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
And so here is the issue. A company with big.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Backers like Microsoft when it started venture capital, well, it
has an obligation to grow its business and to make money,
and investors from Silicon Valley want a turnover very quickly.
They are not patient about their return. They come in
by a company, want to grow it, and out they go.
(16:52):
So the first time must sues open AIS in June
of twenty twenty four. The emails show Musk acknowledge the
need for the company to make large sums of money.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
He originally invested in it, he is now out of it.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
He wants to buy it, and he's filing a lawsuit
because they.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Breach their charter that it's going to be a nonprofit.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
So let me get this right, all right, part of
is a nonprofit, Musk issuing it has to stay a nonprofit,
but he's willing to buy it for one hundred billion
dollars because it's worth so much money and makes money,
or at least it's about to make money. And so
which one do you want?
Speaker 2 (17:30):
No money?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Because that's what it's worth zero if it stays a nonprofit.
My guess is if he were to keep it a
nonprofit and pay off all the investors that they're insane
wins on this their profit.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
You know what, he can have a nonprofit and make
no money on it. Okay, is he going to do that? No?
So what does open ai do well?
Speaker 1 (18:00):
It accuses Musk of being jealous that he was no
longer involved in the startup.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
It's that simple, and it has become a personal fight.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
So now AI companies are well, can you imagine what
altman is worth?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
He started?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
There was a first company started actually chat GPT open
Ai think is the company.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Is that owns it.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
And the only downside about AI now because it AI
takes massive amounts of energy, takes very high end, very
expensive chips, and the Chinese have been able to do it.
A couple of guys have been able to do it
with cheap with chips that barely power your refrigerator or
(18:51):
you're old, Atari far far cheaper, quicker, better.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
We'll see what happens. That's up in the air.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
How unusual the Chinese producing products at a much much
lower cost but at the same time having the tech.
Great story I want to share with you. The owner
of Sony, right after World War two, had started manufacturing
(19:20):
tape recorder super scope and he had just started was
and he met with an American CEO of a company
that was looking at distribution, and he said maybe this
even before Sony started it was just a startup, and
the Americans sitting down with him this is in Japan,
(19:42):
said the only thing Japanese business can do is make
those little paper umbrellas that you put in drinks like
my ties. Well, the Japanese so certainly showed him, didn't they.
And the same thing as happening with China, where they
are ahead of the game. They're able to produce great
(20:04):
ev cars at about the third of the cost that.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
We pay for him here.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
It's fascinating stuff, the way life is going. There is
a story about the Altadena fire in which a one
hundred year old woman was left in a senior home. Now,
if there's a fire anywhere near where I am and
I'm one hundred years old, to be rescued, you would
(20:33):
have to pull me out of the ground, which is
the case.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
With most of us. She was alive, still is.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Alive, and she wasn't rescued until two firefighters went in
and we're looking for people, and they found her down
the hall and they were able to rescue her. And
therein lies a big issue because her son said, if
it wasn't just a question of luck, she wouldn't be around,
(21:03):
and so he has called for total reform. I think
the reform is pretty easy, and it has to do
with that the authorities have every senior home, they have
it on record, and as soon as anything near a
fire burns out and that's the risk, they go in
and clean the place out, making sure that everybody who
(21:24):
needs to get out gets out.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
So that is fairly easy.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
But I think this goes beyond that and talking about
how elderly people, how important elderly people are in.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Our lives, not much. Do you know?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
There are countries that the senior homes don't exist because the.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Culture is old people live at home.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Most homes in those countries are multi generational. You've got
the kids leaving with their living with their parents, living
with their parents parents, and they can even go beyond that.
And if you go to Japan, you go to certain
places in Europe, one hundred year old great grandmother.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yess, her great great grandmother would be at home.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
She'd be wrinkled and old and barely able to function.
This woman walked down the hall, she walked out a walker.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
The other day, I was in a restaurant with a
woman who yeah, it was what restaurant was that, I
don't remember, but she was.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
I was sitting down and her family with a walker.
It was awaiting. We were waiting. Her family with a
walker comes by, she's with a walker, and says, do
you mind if she sits down?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I go, yeah, I mind. You know, I'm sitting here.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
And literally they said she's one hundred years old, and
she knew she was one hundred years old. So she
looked down at me and said, I'm one hundred years old,
not in therefore I should sit down. And she was
just very proud of it and said I'm one hundred
years old. And I said, I don't care how old
(23:07):
you are, you're not taking this seat. Now, that part
is not really the way it happened, but I'm one
hundred years.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Old and moving with a walker.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Everybody who heard that went over there and congratulated her
and said that is a wonderful thing. A centenarian who
is coming into a restaurant to eat with her family.
Did you I thought that was Did you see the
video of the one hundred year old woman that they
that they found.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah I did. I just like, she's like, don't lose me.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, she's perfectly lucid. She goes, I'm here, don't lose me.
Don't lose me.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
By the way, the joking, the joking I did.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
About telling that one hundred year old woman that you
couldn't sit in my seat, and that's really not much
of a joke.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
You guys have a lot to talk about the day
he's the buggy whip. No, not a lot, did you guys?
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Although they called you know what they did, They called
her first before me, even though I was there first,
And I'm screaming at the hostess, yelling, hey, I was
here first. It's like when my kids were born. There
was a DJ from and this is absolutely true. There
(24:26):
was a DJ from some minor rock station and his
wife was pregnant and she was delivering as Marjorie was delivering,
and we were waiting for an o R. It was
pretty crowded, we were waiting for the R to be cleaned,
and she went in first, and I'm screaming, has anybody
(24:46):
looked at the ratings? What is she doing first? That
actually happened, By the way.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Oh, do you hear any of us giving pushback? No? Oh,
I can't believe it. That didn't happen. All right, you've
been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
You're listenings KFI AM six forty the Bill Handle show
on demand on the iHeartRadio f KFI.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It is handled here in the morning crew. It is Tuesday,
February eleventh.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
As we continue on with the program, now a little
bit about the fires, and we talk about the history
of these fires. Do you know that fires in southern
California go back, I don't know, thousands of years. How
is that possible. It really started with a conquistadoris and
(00:39):
I'll tell you about that in a moment, but let's talk.
Let's go back to nineteen sixty one. I'm gonna give
you a little history of fires in southern California. So
nineteen sixty one, you had a trash pile up in
the Mulholland Drive area and a fire broke out, picked
up by the Santa Ana Wins and then went as
(01:00):
the canyons and.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It was apocalyptic.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
And what made that one pretty interesting is how many
celebrities lived in that area. And this is why I
caught the world Tension actor Kim Novak. And by the way,
these names may not be very important or you don't
know them, but this in nineteen sixty one, these were
a List actors, actor Kim Novak, her home was destroyed.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Well, she was actually took a hose out to home
to save it.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
A guy by the name of Richard Nixon who had
lost the presidential as you know, in nineteen sixty and
then ran for governor and was killed by Pat Brown,
the governor, the father of Jerry Brown.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So he went to practice law in California.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Well, his home that was about to go, and there
he is with a garden hose trying to soak the
wooden roof shingles.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Fred McMurray who starred.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
In My Three Sons at the time and big television
series in the sixties or early sixties, he had to
evacuate his family and he took worker studio workers from
the set to help evacuate his family.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So the fire reaches bell Air.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
The mansions of bell Air where a lot of very
high end people live. Thermal heat which we've seen before
with the embers that just happened, lifted the wood shingles.
They were all of wood at that time, high end
of the air. Fifty mile an hour winds hurled them
more than a mile over Brentwood by nightfall. The bell
(02:46):
Air fire destroyed four hundred and eighty four homes, including
homes of Burt Lancaster, huge actor, comedian Joey Brown, which
I'm sure you've never heard of, but massive star Nobel
Laureate who Willard Libby, which is a fairly big news.
(03:06):
So firefighters extinguished the flames. And there was Jajah Gabor
dressed up in well in Jaja Gaborland and she is
with a shovel going through the lumber of her or
the rubble of her home, looking for a safe that
was there with her jewels in it.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And she had a zillion dollars.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Worth of jewels. That's that's who she was. So the
bell airfire became known as the big one. Back then,
four hundred and eighty four homes, that was the big one.
It forced everyone in La to reckon with the dangers
(03:50):
of fire.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
They really dealt with it now.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
They realize that people in La realized, okay, fires in
the canyons are no small deal. So l officials in
response put in a bunch of new fire safety measures,
more firefighting helicopters, new fire stations, a new reservoir, and
no more.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Untreated wood shingles.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
They had to be treated later on, it was no
more wood shingles of any kind. And you will see
today you will not see wood shingles on a house.
A roof lasts about thirty years, and we're already about
fifty years into an ordinance of no more wood shingles.
(04:33):
So now we have concrete and tile and that's fire proof,
actually not only just fire resistant, so also in high
risk fire areas, a brush clearance program. And so this
is what they're doing now. But I'll tell you what
they didn't do is they didn't stop building in the canyons.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
That they didn't do.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
So there was no measure push to radically rethink of building.
It just disappeared new housing tracks all over the place.
And then larger and more deadly fires swept through the region.
And all the fire the safety improvements improvements prompted by
the bel Air fire, well they were there, but they
(05:21):
couldn't outpace the new development and climate change.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
It's that simple.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So now we have the Eton and the Palasages fire,
probably the big one, sixteen thousand structures, twenty nine people dead,
and once again new reckoning. How many LA homes came
to be built on land that is so vulnerable to fire,
and the question.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Is should they even be rebuilt? And at this point
we're grappling with that.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Stephen Pine, it was a fire historian Professor Meredith Arizona
State University studies this.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
He said, straight out. California is built to burn straight out.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
So the way the topography is the way the climate
works in California, it is built. So what happened and
this really got crazy more than a century ago.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So what happened one hundred years ago?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Well, the building on hillsides really started with a venge vengeance.
So Los Angeles begins to overtake San Francisco as the
most populated city on the West coast, and real estate
developers begin their eye begin to look up to the
foothills of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains. There's
(06:54):
a nineteen twenty three ad that showed renderings of the
Spanish Revival houses that we have in southern California, and
there they were over steep hillsides, over bluffs. The ad read,
the future of Los Angeles is in the hills right
(07:16):
there billboards. Matter of fact, that's when Hollywood Land, the
Hollywood Sign was first built, and it was Hollywood Land
and it was advertising a tract, a real estate track
in the hills. And then the land part dropped out,
And of course now we have the world famous Hollywood
(07:37):
sign that was nineteen twenty three. You know what the
lots cost in those days two thousand bucks. You know
what that is today, thirty six thousand dollars. Now can
you imagine a lot for thirty six thousand dollars in
the hills. So in the twenties, now it was boom
(08:00):
time for La the whole country. It started to go
crazy before that the nineteen thirteen construction of the La Aqueduct.
This is William Mulholland who engineered that Mullholland Drive at
the top of the hill, and that paved the way
for one hundred thousand people to move into the city
each year because there wasn't.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Water before that.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
And when that aqueduct came down the mountain, all of
a sudden, the San Fernando Valley became a fertile landscape.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
For growing particularly oranges. Before that it was desert.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And as a matter of fact, if you go up
to the north valley right off Fornaldi, you can see
where the aqueduct spills into the area that fills up
the San Fernando Valley and the reservoirs. Bell Air marketed
itself as the exclusive residential park.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Of the West.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
There were lavish real estate ads, sales brochures, and bell
Air was so exclusive. Not only did the area, the
owner of the bel Air Tract and others not sell
to blacks or Hispanics, not that they had money anyway,
because we're talking in the twenties, but also no Jews.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Of course that's a given.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Nobody in the motion picture industry was allowed to buy
because that was considered less.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Than today bell Air. Well, you tell me, huh.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
The bell Air count Country Club started because of the discrimination.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Okay, So here we go.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Californians are drawn to the woodlands, the base of the mountains.
They didn't want to live down in the canyons. They
wanted views. So there they are at the top of
the mount on all these hillsides. Perfect place for a fire,
absolutely perfect.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
This all started.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
When the Spanish colonizer that can kiss the daughters came
in the fifteen hundreds. The natives, the Indians as they
were known the Native Americans, would use burn. They did
controlled burns. That's been going on for hundreds and hundreds
of years. So the Spanish go kiss, the daughters come.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
By, and they stop it cold. That continues.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
On eighteen fifty, legislators passed the Act for the Government
and Protection of Indians. No intentional burning anymore. So the
move to suppress fire, that's what that was about. Magnified
the risk of fire, the destructive fires. And in nineteen
(10:54):
twenty three, the Fire Chief one an ordnance prohibiting wood shingles.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
It went down that far, that early. But what happened.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Wood shingles weren't made illegal until the nineteen seventies. Well,
the lumber industry, how powerful do you think the lumber
industry was shut that down. We're not going to lose
manufacturing wood shingles, especially with a growing population like that.
(11:27):
How about that lobbyists changing a law. Well, you had
a whole bunch more fires, and then the population exploded.
After World War Two, you had all of these young
men move into Los Angeles, which was a staging ground
for the Pacific Fight, and they realized, wow, look at
(11:48):
this land, Look at these places.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
It's cheap, it's a great place to live.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
I remember my parents' home that they bought in the
mid fifties twenty six thousand dollars. Today that would be
I don't know, two fifty three hundred thousand dollars North Hollywood,
beautiful three bedroom, two bath house, gorgeous, decent sized lot.
So this went on and on with half a dozen fires.
(12:20):
Now maybe they're getting serious about retrofitting your home.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I don't know. We'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I think people are looking pretty serious now about it.
And the easy stuff is easy, putting in those vents
that stopped from embers from coming in, pulling back brush
fire resistant, fire resistant trees. At the Persian Palace, I
had big palm trees right next to the house. Those
(12:56):
ignite which is very which are very easy to ignite
and burn, would burn down the house. And the fire
was very close. And people were saying, but weren't you
worried about the fires? I go, no, I've already sold
the house, so I don't care. Okay, here's the big story.
And Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Is he crazy? Who the hell knows?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
So open Ai Elon Musk is trying to buy now.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
He started open Ai.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
It's obviously an artificial intelligence company with Sam Altman, and
he is out of it, but he's filed a lawsuit
against the company and Altman. And here's why, because Altman
misrepresented open Ai. And here's the fascinating part of it.
Altman and the other co founders were so frightened of
(13:52):
what AI could do that they established the company as
a non profit and gave its code out. It was
open source code. You can do people can do whatever
we want you want with it, which is basically the
company becomes worthless at that point, and there were investors
(14:15):
that were allowed into the company. How it got started.
You know what investors want. They do not want a nonprofit.
They want a for profit. You don't pour hundreds of
millions of dollars into a company and say, okay, it's worthless.
That it's not making any money because it is a nonprofit.
So they had to switch at least a part of
it to a for profit. Musk is suing saying, you lied,
(14:41):
you lied, You said that it was a nonprofit. Now
you have most of it as a profit, and now
it's valued at one hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
That's how big a deal AI is. And so what's
going on with this is Musk wants to buy it.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
He has his own company, x XAI and artificial intelligence
intelligence company. Major companies are investing billions and billions of
dollars into AI. So he says, I'll buy it for
one hundred billion dollars the for profit part because.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Now we've got some money.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Allman posts on x no, thank you, but we'll buy
Twitter for nine point seven four.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Billion dollars ten billion dollars. Musk bought Twitter for forty
four billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
It was worth twenty five billion dollars at the time.
Think you overpaid, and now it's valued at about ten
billion dollars. Now that's not to say Musk is the
richest man in the world, the richest person in the world.
So between SpaceX and Tenes and a few other things,
he has Tesla batteries and a bunch of other companies,
(16:05):
he's doing just fine. But the Twitter issue is it's
more of a yuts is what it is from Altman.
Altman and Musk are now enemies, I mean real enemies,
and they're suing each other, going going crazy.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
And so here is the issue. A company with big.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Backers like Microsoft when it started venture capital, well, it
has an obligation to grow its business and to make money,
and investors from Silicon Valley want a turnover very quickly.
They are not patient about their return. They come in
by a company, want to grow it, and out they go.
(16:52):
So the first time must sues open AIS in June
of twenty twenty four. The emails show Musk acknowledge the
need for the company to make large sums of money.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
He originally invested in it, he is now out of it.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
He wants to buy it, and he's filing a lawsuit
because they.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Breach their charter that it's going to be a nonprofit.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
So let me get this right, all right, part of
is a nonprofit, Musk issuing it has to stay a nonprofit,
but he's willing to buy it for one hundred billion
dollars because it's worth so much money and makes money,
or at least it's about to make money. And so
which one do you want?
Speaker 2 (17:30):
No money?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Because that's what it's worth zero if it stays a nonprofit.
My guess is if he were to keep it a
nonprofit and pay off all the investors that they're insane
wins on this their profit.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
You know what, he can have a nonprofit and make
no money on it. Okay, is he going to do that? No?
So what does open ai do well?
Speaker 1 (18:00):
It accuses Musk of being jealous that he was no
longer involved in the startup.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
It's that simple, and it has become a personal fight.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
So now AI companies are well, can you imagine what
altman is worth?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
He started?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
There was a first company started actually chat GPT open
Ai think is the company.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Is that owns it.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
And the only downside about AI now because it AI
takes massive amounts of energy, takes very high end, very
expensive chips, and the Chinese have been able to do it.
A couple of guys have been able to do it
with cheap with chips that barely power your refrigerator or
(18:51):
you're old, Atari far far cheaper, quicker, better.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
We'll see what happens. That's up in the air.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
How unusual the Chinese producing products at a much much
lower cost but at the same time having the tech.
Great story I want to share with you. The owner
of Sony, right after World War two, had started manufacturing
(19:20):
tape recorder super scope and he had just started was
and he met with an American CEO of a company
that was looking at distribution, and he said maybe this
even before Sony started it was just a startup, and
the Americans sitting down with him this is in Japan,
(19:42):
said the only thing Japanese business can do is make
those little paper umbrellas that you put in drinks like
my ties. Well, the Japanese so certainly showed him, didn't they.
And the same thing as happening with China, where they
are ahead of the game. They're able to produce great
(20:04):
ev cars at about the third of the cost that.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
We pay for him here.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
It's fascinating stuff, the way life is going. There is
a story about the Altadena fire in which a one
hundred year old woman was left in a senior home. Now,
if there's a fire anywhere near where I am and
I'm one hundred years old, to be rescued, you would
(20:33):
have to pull me out of the ground, which is
the case.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
With most of us. She was alive, still is.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Alive, and she wasn't rescued until two firefighters went in
and we're looking for people, and they found her down
the hall and they were able to rescue her. And
therein lies a big issue because her son said, if
it wasn't just a question of luck, she wouldn't be around,
(21:03):
and so he has called for total reform. I think
the reform is pretty easy, and it has to do
with that the authorities have every senior home, they have
it on record, and as soon as anything near a
fire burns out and that's the risk, they go in
and clean the place out, making sure that everybody who
(21:24):
needs to get out gets out.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
So that is fairly easy.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
But I think this goes beyond that and talking about
how elderly people, how important elderly people are in.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Our lives, not much. Do you know?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
There are countries that the senior homes don't exist because the.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Culture is old people live at home.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Most homes in those countries are multi generational. You've got
the kids leaving with their living with their parents, living
with their parents parents, and they can even go beyond that.
And if you go to Japan, you go to certain
places in Europe, one hundred year old great grandmother.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yess, her great great grandmother would be at home.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
She'd be wrinkled and old and barely able to function.
This woman walked down the hall, she walked out a walker.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
The other day, I was in a restaurant with a
woman who yeah, it was what restaurant was that, I
don't remember, but she was.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
I was sitting down and her family with a walker.
It was awaiting. We were waiting. Her family with a
walker comes by, she's with a walker, and says, do
you mind if she sits down?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I go, yeah, I mind. You know, I'm sitting here.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
And literally they said she's one hundred years old, and
she knew she was one hundred years old. So she
looked down at me and said, I'm one hundred years old,
not in therefore I should sit down. And she was
just very proud of it and said I'm one hundred
years old. And I said, I don't care how old
(23:07):
you are, you're not taking this seat. Now, that part
is not really the way it happened, but I'm one
hundred years.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Old and moving with a walker.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Everybody who heard that went over there and congratulated her
and said that is a wonderful thing. A centenarian who
is coming into a restaurant to eat with her family.
Did you I thought that was Did you see the
video of the one hundred year old woman that they
that they found.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah I did. I just like, she's like, don't lose me.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, she's perfectly lucid. She goes, I'm here, don't lose me.
Don't lose me.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
By the way, the joking, the joking I did.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
About telling that one hundred year old woman that you
couldn't sit in my seat, and that's really not much
of a joke.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
You guys have a lot to talk about the day
he's the buggy whip. No, not a lot, did you guys?
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Although they called you know what they did, They called
her first before me, even though I was there first,
And I'm screaming at the hostess, yelling, hey, I was
here first. It's like when my kids were born. There
was a DJ from and this is absolutely true. There
(24:26):
was a DJ from some minor rock station and his
wife was pregnant and she was delivering as Marjorie was delivering,
and we were waiting for an o R. It was
pretty crowded, we were waiting for the R to be cleaned,
and she went in first, and I'm screaming, has anybody
(24:46):
looked at the ratings? What is she doing first? That
actually happened, By the way.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Oh, do you hear any of us giving pushback? No? Oh,
I can't believe it. That didn't happen. All right, you've
been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
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